“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

This difference in immediacy is rather important for our consideration of the inner senses. This is also why I mentioned that the ears and the eyes, while connected with the body, are directed outward. They bring data to the body but very seldom do they collect data from the body. I am beginning to get into some material that is relatively difficult to explain, considering that I must take all of your camouflage patterns into consideration.

As I have said, the outer senses deal mainly and as far as I know exclusively with camouflage pattern. The inner senses, my dear Joseph, are senses which deal with realities beneath camouflage patterns, and which carry data of these realities, these inner realities, to the body. These inner senses therefore are thoroughly capable of seeing the inside of the body, in a way that the outer eyes cannot.

As the outer senses of sight, sound and smell appear to reach outward, bringing data to the physical body from an outside observable camouflage pattern, so the inside senses seem to extend far inward, bringing important inner reality data to the physical body. There is also a transforming process here much like the moment that we have spoken of in the creation of a painting.

The physical body is a camouflage pattern operating in a larger camouflage pattern. But the physical body and all camouflage patterns, looked at in another manner, are also transformers of the vital inner stuff of the universe, where this vitality is then enabled to operate under new and various conditions.

I risk repeating myself, but I want these steps to be plain. This vital data is sent to the mind by the inner senses. Any material that is important for the body’s contact with outer camouflage patterns is given to the brain. The subconscious, so-called, is a connective between mind and brain, between the inner senses and the outer senses. It is actually partly on your plane and partly on other planes. Portions of it do deal with camouflage patterns, with the personal past of the present personality, with racial camouflage memories; and the greater portion belongs to the inner world, and as data comes into it from the inner world, so can it reach far into the inner world itself.

You must remember here that time is part of the camouflage pattern. Now the outer sense of sight would seem to confound space, and seemingly conquer a portion of distance by using your eyes. That is, you do not necessarily have to walk a short distance in order to see what is in the particular space involved.

So the inner senses and the subconscious can do the same thing as far as inner space, and what you would call inner time, is concerned. But this is not amazing, far from it. It only seems strange because you are so familiar with your precious camouflage patterns. Time and space, dear friends, are both camouflage patterns, therefore the fact that the inner senses can conquer time and space is not, after all, so surprising. To the mind with its subconscious, and to the inner senses, there is no time and space, and therefore to them nothing is conquered. The camouflage is simply not present.

When I speak of the subconscious in this manner, I speak of course of that larger portion which deals with the inner realities. I want to give you more detailed information about the inner realities themselves. Actually they do not parallel the outer senses, and this will sound appalling to you I’m afraid, simply because there is nothing to be seen, smelled, heard or touched in the manner in which you are accustomed. This is extremely hard to explain, since I do not want to give you the idea that existence without your particular set of camouflage patterns is bland and innocuous, because this is not the case.

Camouflage patterns are bad enough to deal with from my end, but personal camouflage patterns thrown up by the brain are worse. As far as your neurotics are concerned—for some reason speaking of the affairs usually called seances reminded me of neurotics—as far as neurotics are concerned, this neuroticism is part and parcel of an inadequacy on the part of the physical body and the personality both, that involves an inability to handle camouflage patterns.

The conscious mind deals directly with survival as far as the particular camouflage patterns are concerned. But there is no actual dividing line or distinction between the conscious and the subconscious, nor among the apparent levels of the subconscious itself.

I have said that the brain is the mind in camouflage, and so it is. It is the portion of the mind that is more or less observable to the surgeon, and the part of the mind that reacts to camouflage pattern, and the part that can be explored and tampered with, though this is dangerous indeed.

The camouflage patterns of course do belong to the inner world also, since the camouflages themselves are formed from the vitality stuff of the universe by mental enzymes, which have a chemical reaction on your plane. The reaction of course being a distortion. That is, any camouflage pattern at all is bound to be a distortion, in a sense, of vitality forced into a particular form.

He would in no way lose consciousness of who he was, and he would perceive these experiences, again, somewhat in the same manner that you perceive heat and cold. In your camouflage pattern you must adapt yourself to the effects of heat and cold, but our man in the inner world would not be under any such obligation. I am speaking now only of our first inner sense.